Discover, share and preserve faded ads and ghost signs from all over the world.

About

This project began as an offshoot of my senior thesis at Drexel University. My thesis became a book that captured the sense of a space (Old City Philadelphia) using photographs, layout and found material. In the course of collecting this material, and through my love of typography, I became curious about and enamored by the number of mysterious eroded signs painted on the sides of buildings throughout the city. When the immense Jack Frost sugar refinery on Delaware Avenue was being demolished, I grabbed my camera to document the old signage before it was gone. I began to attempt to save these signs from all the areas of Philadelphia, and decided to put them online and map them for others to discover. The Ghost Sign Project was born.

For Further Exploration

I’ll hopefully be updating often, but in the meantime there are other ways to explore ghost signs: